The Heart of a Liberal Education

The goal of this course is to grapple with authors who asked questions fundamental to a liberal education and who strove to answer those questions with a profundity that set a standard for great thinking after them. Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Plato asked the questions central to human life: wherein lie human happiness and human dignity? These authors also addressed the requisite corollary questions: what is the nature of the human soul? what is the best kind of polity? what virtue does a particular polity encourage? what virtue does a particular kind of literature teach?

We will read the following works in whole or in part: Homer’s Iliad, Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and the Oresteia, Aristophanes’ The Clouds, and five dialogues of Plato (Apology, Meno,Gorgias, Republic, Phaedrus).